Today’s search podcast covers issues on if search can build brand; Microsoft
loses a key exec; do people at Google really only search with Google? and more!

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Below are links to items discussed:

The
Search & Branding Tug-Of-War, Again
"Cannes Lions Diary: Search under scrutiny" from the Financial Times at the
Cannes Lions Advertising Festival covers what we’ve seen before, traditional
ad buyers worried that search is going to rob their budgets while search
engines planning to do that theft try to distract with a "search is a brand
thing" message….

Nielsen//NetRatings Stats Keep Google On Top In May 2006
Last month, Nielsen/NetRatings had Google hitting the 50 percent mark of
percentage of searches handled in the United States (when rounded up from
49.8%). This month, Google slips back down very slightly to 49 percent. I’ve
warned before that you should be wary of month-to-month changes. That said,
here’s the rundown, which gives Yahoo a percentage gain to Google’s loss:…

Chinese
Authorities Temporarily Shut Down Two Large Chinese Portals
PaidContent reports that two of the largest Chinese portals have been
temporarily shut down by the Chinese authorities for not passing a "an
on-the-spot censorship test." The chief editors of Sina.com and Sohu.com "were
summoned to the State Council Information Office," that morning. While on the
topic of Chinese censorship, take a look at the list Philipp compiled of
Censored Domains in Google.cn….

Martin
Taylor, VP Of Windows Live & MSN Marketing Leaves Microsoft
ClickZ reports on a Bloomberg story about Martin Taylor, the vice president of
Windows Live and MSN marketing group has left MSN. Reportedly, Taylor was good
friends with CEO Steve Ballmer and was a possible candidate in the future for
that position. The ClickZ article says, "The wording of the Microsoft
statement seems to imply the company, and not Taylor, made "the difficult
decision to part ways."" But why then would Taylor just be appointed the VP
position and credited with being the "a go-to guy for problem areas," in late
March? I dunno. Interesting and I wonder what type…

Microsoft Employees Use Google More Than MSN?
Philipp Lenssen reported on a Andrew Hitchcock post that detailed search
engine usage by search engine firm. It appears that Microsoft employees prefer
Google to MSN Search when searching the web. At Microsoft 66.31 percent use
Google, 19.65 percent use MSN and 10.18 percent use Yahoo. Yahoo employees
aren’t afraid to use Google search either, with 29.80 percent of searches
conducted on Google and 68.87 percent on Yahoo Search. Google employees seem
to be 100 percent loyal to Google search, based on the data….

InfoSpace Rebrands, Upgrades Local Search Site
InfoSpace, which also owns and operates the Dogpile metasearch engine, has
cleaned up its interface and yesterday rebranded its local search engine as "Infospacefindit."
The chief purpose behind the rebranding according to the company is to create
consistency between its mobile and online local search platforms. In addition,
the online platform is moving from one that more resembles an Internet yellow
pages product to a local search engine. The company has struggled to gain
market share in local search online but has a very strong position in
mobile….

Mashups
and Other Fun with Flickr
A big part of the appeal of Flickr, Yahoo’s photo sharing service, is its ease
of use. It’s not only easy to upload and work with your own images, but it’s
also a snap to search for and play around with images uploaded by others?in
relatively sophisticated ways, if you take advantage of the Flickr API to
create mashups that combine images with other applications. In today’s
SearchDay article, Hacking Flickr I review a new book that’s part of the
O’Reilly Hacks series that shows you how to take maximum advantage of Flickr’s
capabilities….

Zillow
Announces ‘Zillow Labs’
Everybody’s going "Web2.0." Real estate vertical search engine and valuation
site Zillow.com has launched Zillow Labs, "a sandbox where developers and
others can try out new, cutting-edge projects. You can help by testing them,
then sharing your suggestions, comments and even your own tools." Right now
the tools include a Firefox plug-in, a Google Toolbar button and a search box
you can add to your site….

Don’t
Vote For Us As Best Search Marketing Blog At MarketingSherpa!
That’s right. We don’t want your vote in the "Blogs On Search Marketing" or
"Best Podcast" categories of MarketingSherpa’s awards, happening right now. We
couldn’t take them if we wanted to, since we didn’t make the short list. Then
again, neither did John Battelle’s blog, nor Threadwatch, nor Matt Cutts, nor
many of the others we list in our blog roll. I guess either:…

Google
CEO Eric Schmidt In Featured Session At SES San Jose 2006
I’m very pleased to announce that Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt will be in a
featured session at our upcoming Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 show
this August. "A Conversation With Eric Schmidt" will happen from 10am to
10:45am on August 9, the third day of our four day show. During the session,
I’ll be talking with Eric about how Google is growing and dealing with
challenges and issues in search, especially given its stature as the leader in
the space. Eric’s session hasn’t yet been posted to the conference agenda, but
that will change shortly. You’ll find full…

This week, both LinkedIn and Facebook are beefing up their paid social offerings in different ways, while Google seeks to cut off Adwords revenues for fake news sites. And might Google be favouring desktop over its own AMP in its upcoming mobile-first index?

Here we’ll take a look at the basic things you need to know in regards to search engine optimisation, a discipline that everyone in your organisation should at least be aware of, if not have a decent technical understanding.